America’s
neoconservative elite and their collaborators in the pro-Israel
lobby in Washington have fired a first shot in the opening guns
of a new Cold War being launched against Russian Premier Vladimir
Putin.

Although it hasn’t been reported widely in the America mass
media, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (DConn.), two
of the Israeli lobby’s leading congressional stalwarts, introduced
a resolution in the Senate on Feb. 19, condemning
Putin and urging President Bush to push for suspending Russia’s
membership in the G-8 organization of industrial nations.

Latching on to the president’s emphatic declaration in his
Jan. 20 inaugural address of a new global campaign by the United
States for the promotion of “democracy.” Lieberman announced
that “President Putin’s assault on democracy in Russia
violates the spirit of the industrialized democracies and the letter
of Russia’s obligations to the Group of Eight. We must openly
confront anti-democratic backsliding in Russia for the sake of all
those who look to the United States as a beacon for freedom.”

The resolution was designed to put Bush on the spot just as he was
meeting with Putin in Slovakia on Feb. 24.

The motive for the neo-conservatives and their congressional spokesmen
to undermine Putin is clear: Putin recently challenged Bush and
Israel by daring to say publicly that he (Putin) does not believe
that Iran is seeking to build nuclear weapons.

Although the burgeoning hostility against Putin by the neo-conservatives
has been widely hashed over in small-circulation pro-Israel publications
and American Jewish community newspapers on a regular basis, it
has only been recently that mainstream publications such as The
Washington Post and The New York Times
have begun to echo those concerns about Putin. It is almost as if
the big name dailies were taking the lead from the other journals.
Increasingly, however, the word that “Putin is a possible
enemy” is now being preached to the average American through
the outlets of the mass media.

Though Russia joined the G-8, which includes Britain, Canada, Japan,
France, Italy and Germany, in 2002, the companion resolutions in
the Senate and the House ask the president to enlist the other G-8
countries to join with the United States in suspending Russia’s
membership until such time as Bush decides that Russia is supposedly
committed to so-called “democratic principles.”

This is the second time that McCain and Lieberman introduced such
a measure, although their last effort, in 2003, failed in committee.
At that time, two other members of Congress, California Reps. Tom
Lantos — a Democrat — and Christopher Cox — a
Republican — introduced a companion resolution in the House
which reached the floor but was never voted upon.

Reflecting on the fact that the media was increasingly promoting
hostility to Putin, American Free Press
noted on Oct. 25, 2004, that the media’s primary concern about
Putin stems from the fact that he has been moving against the handful
of billionaire plutocrats in Russia who grabbed control of the Russian
economy with the open-connivance of then- Russian leader Boris Yeltsin,
following the collapse of the old Soviet Union. Many of these oligarchs
also held Israeli citizenship.

One American hard-line pro-Israel publication, The New
Republic, raised the question on Sept. 24, 2004: “Is
Russia going fascist?” asserting that whether Putin personally
remains in power or not, there is a growing movement “nationalist”
in nature — that holds great sway among the Russian population.
TNR expressed concern that “a fascist revolution” could
be in the offing, meaning a movement hostile to the Israeli oligarchs,
with international criminal connections, who rule the Russian economy.

Likewise, much earlier, in his 1995 book, Russia: A
Return to Imperialism, Boston-University-based Israeli
academic Uri Ra’anan sounded the concern that post-Soviet
Russia may pose a threat to the West.

These works echo such writers as Jonathon Brent and Vladimir Naumov
who, in their 2003 book, Stalin’s Last Crime,
published evidence that longtime Soviet leaderJosef Stalinwas almost certainly murdered in 1953
after he began moves toward exorcising Zionist influence in Soviet
circles of power. They concluded by saying that “Stalin is
a perpetual possibility,” leaving open the theoretical proposition
that Putin, or other would-be Russian leaders, may ultimately emerge
as heir to Stalin’s anti-Zionist legacy.

With the American neo-conservatives, whose ideological godfathers
are widely known as admitted ex-Trotskyite communists, now moving
against Putin, it is as if we are seeing a rejuvenation of the war
against Russian nationalism by the Trotskyites, retooled for 21st
century geopolitical considerations. Now — unlike in the first
half of the 20th century prior to the founding of the state of Israel
— the central role of that Middle East state in the neo-conservative
worldview cannot be understated, for the concern about Israel is
a front-line consideration in the neo-conservative campaign against
Putin.

Illustration: Photographof Vladimir
Putin.
Caption: "PUTIN PUMMELED: Because he
has been working to break the back of powerful Israeli oligarchs
in Russia and has refused to support U.S. efforts to undermine
Iran, a roadblock in Israel’s design for Middle East
dominance, Vladimir Putin is increasingly under attack by
the U.S. media. Now the neo-cons are rallying to undermine
him. Stay tuned."